


In the Temple of the Holly King

by RoxieFlash



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:27:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4076092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoxieFlash/pseuds/RoxieFlash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which he learns just what he can't live without.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Temple of the Holly King

Rose lay on a stone bier in the temple of the Holly King for one hour, fourteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds.

It's astonishing, to the tiny part of him still able to observe such things, how the sight of her still and cold (lips he's never kissed tinged with blue, and nothing else but stark, terrifying paleness - no no no it's not  _right_ , Rose Tyler is supposed to be  _pink_  and  _yellow_ ) stops his thought process in it's tracks. Seeing her good as dead put an end to any thoughts that could help her no longer be that way - he became, effectively, useless.

This ought to have bothered him, the sort of emotional compromise that rendered him mentally incapable, but it didn't. He was too busy covering her with his jacket, brushing her hair away from her eyes, mumbling nonsense to himself as he paced in jerky half-movements, trying and failing to think of a way to force life back into her veins. Every thought was more slippery than the last, until at last every possibility got away from him and his mind was just a litany of  _she's gone she's gone she's gone_.

_he'll never tell that he pressed his lips to hers like a prince in a fairy tale_

_or how his heart had broken when she hadn't stirred_

Fortunately, the Holly Priests were quite clever themselves, and all of them together made up at least one and a half Time Lords. Their high priest had been rather affronted by the rather eager kiss on the lips he'd received in exchange for the antidote to the poison Rose had accidentally ingested, but, considering the circumstances, there really wasn't any other way he could've reacted.

Rose was  _alive._

At her first shallow breath he laughed; at the first faint stain of the proper shade of pink back into her cheeks he had to try very hard not to cry. When she grimaced and sat up, her hair askew and her face scrunched up as though she were minutes away from climbing out of bed and padding her way into the TARDIS kitchen for coffee, the need to cradle her to his chest was almost unbearable.

He settled for reaching over and twining her fingers with his.

"Doctor," Rose squinted up at him. "Was I  _really_  drunk last night, or were you kissin' me?"

She squinted, and then her eyes grew wide and alarmed.

"Oh god, I didn't kiss  _you,_ did I? M'sorry, I can't - Doctor?"

And there it is, the exact moment she realized something was wrong. Suddenly Rose's eyes dart everywhere - the stone bier where she's laying and the shroud draped over her, the cold stone temple and his own tear-streaked face.

"You weren't -" he swiped at his face with the sleeve of the hand not holding Rose's, and sniffed. He sounded quite stuffy. "That is, ah, there was something a bit…off, about your drink."

"The eggnog stuff?"

He laughed wetly and sniffed again. "Yes. The eggnog stuff. It had ah, a sort of chemical in that slowed down your metabolism. _"_

 _"_ Really slow, then?"

Rose's free hand cupped his cheek, and he leaned into her touch.

"Yeah," he said. "Really slow."

The concerned knit of her brow was all it took for her to melt into a hug, and he tried, he  _tried_  not to cry, really he did, but he was so  _happy_  and so  _scared_ , and she was warm and here and she hadn't left him. Not yet.

"It's not a bad idea," he says after a few minutes, his voice rough.

"What is?"

"You kissing me. Me kissing you. Any combination of you and me and kissing, really."

"Yeah?" she said, slipping her hand up his back.

He meant to answer, really he did, but her mouth was so near and so very un-kissed by him that he couldn't help but dart forward and steal one, and then another, and then another after that, each one a breath longer and with a little more raking desperation than the last. It wasn't until he had caught her bottom lip between his teeth and felt her fingernails scraping his hairline that he remembered to respond.

"Yeah," he breathed against her mouth. "Oh, Rose Tyler, absolutely yes."


End file.
